This week, we opened our second high-volume vaccination site at Moscone Center, with capacity for 7k-10k shots per day once supply increases.
This is in addition to our first high-volume vaccination site at City College, with a new site in the Bayview coming soon.
We opened our first neighborhood vaccine access site in the Mission, with more neighborhood sites coming to the Bayview, Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, and other neighborhoods with the highest rates of infection and limited access to health care services.
We're continuing to vaccinate at community clinics in the Western Addition, Chinatown, Bayview, Outer Sunset, and Potrero Hill.
We've expanded drop in appointments at the Southeast Health Center and SF General, and our teams are out in these neighborhoods to notify residents.
On Wednesday, Safeway Pharmacy began vaccinating eligible people at SF State University. DPH is partnering with Safeway, CVS, and Walgreens to expand vaccination services throughout the City.
The goal of all of these efforts is to make it as easy as possible once supply increases for people to get vaccinated however it's convenient for them, whether that's at a high-volume site, community clinic, neighborhood site, or a pharmacy.
Finally, sign up to get notified when you're eligible for a vaccine at sf.gov/vaccinenotify. Yesterday we sent 50,000 text and email updates to eligible people to sign up.
More information on all of these efforts can be found here:
The City has offered resources and staff to get our school facilities ready and to support testing for our educators. We’ve offered the guidance and expertise of the Department of Public Health. We are ready and willing to do our part to get our kids back in the classroom.
The data is clear. Black, Latino, and Asian students, especially low-income students, have lost ground academically compared to white and wealthier students. This is hurting the mental health of our kids and our families.
Getting shots into arms quickly is our most important focus, and it's important that we're clear about what is happening with the vaccine rollout.
We've only received a very limited number of doses, which are being administered.
But we're ready for more when we get them.
In order to facilitate large scale vaccinations, the City is working with private healthcare providers & pharmacies, which have received vaccine doses from the state, to open vaccination sites throughout SF.
When we have enough vaccines, these sites will be ready.
Right now, the vaccine is in limited supply and we're currently in Phase 1A of the state guidelines.
We’ve also moved to serve people 65 and over in the SF Health Network. This group is roughly 14,000 people who lack traditional private health insurance.
90% of SF businesses are small businesses. They employ more than half of our workforce, and generate tens of billions in economic activity – most of which remains in SF. For our economy to recover, we need them to thrive.
We'll now be close to $100 million in local support.
This new $62 million in grants and low to zero-interest loans will help us reach businesses that haven’t been able to access the funding they need through previous programs due to their size.
We’ll have more information about how businesses can apply: oewd.org/covid19
Today, Dr. Colfax gave an update on our progress in beating back the alarming surge of COVID-19 cases that we've faced since Thanksgiving.
Here are some of the main takeaways. 🧵
By staying home, we've reduced the reproductive rate of the virus from 1.45 on December 5th to 1.13 as of December 26th.
According to the modeling, this means that we will have saved an estimated 430 lives compared to if we had not lowered the reproductive rate.
But a reproductive rate of 1.13 is still too high. There is more virus circulating right now than ever before and we need to get that number under 1. We've done this twice before, we must do it again.
We do not take these actions lightly. I know the impact that they have on local businesses, employees, and all of our residents, especially without the federal support that we need. But we can't afford to wait and delay the inevitable.
Unfortunately as we expected, San Francisco has been placed on the State's most restrictive "purple" tier due the surge in COVID-19 cases.
Here's what this means for us and what we all need to do to reduce this alarming trend:
This is the most aggressive surge SF has seen to date. We're currently averaging 118 new cases per day compared to 73 per day in the first week of November.
For the week of November 16th, we had 768 diagnosed cases compared to 217 diagnosed cases the week of October 12th.
Beginning tomorrow, November 29th at noon, San Francisco will roll back or reduce capacity of certain activities to conform with the State's requirements.